A Short Q &A With Josh Smith w/ SLAM Magazine

[BusBoyIsBack]

The crazy thing about Smoove is his discretion. He loses his head at inopportune times. We all remember times when a 4th quarter went haywire, a couple of turnovers here and there the Hawks needed someone to grab hold and get them back on track. But what do we see, Smoove deciding to jack up a 20 footer at the worst possible moment. Too often he feeds in to the frenzy instead of stablizing the offense with a drive and at least getting to the line.

Now that I mention it, that's one thing we' ve missed in our offense in the 4th quarter. A player to draw fouls and keep adding points even if the defense clamps down. That's one of my major issues with Joe.

Yeah remember that complete mental lapse he had in one of those Orlando Magic playoff games when Dwight Howard went out the game and we had a chance to really add to our lead. It's like Smoove mentally checked out the game, not even getting back up the court and stuff and Orlando closed the gap without Howard

[Admin]

They asked him what parts of his game is he working on.

I assume working on it is practicing.

SLAM: Can we look for you to shoot some threes this year?

JS: Ahhhhhhh! (Smiles.) Maybe a little. I don’t think I will; I’ll still be midrange, midrange, midrange and blocking shots, and knocking down open midrange shots.

[Admin]

The crazy thing about Smoove is his discretion. He loses his head at inopportune times. We all remember times when a 4th quarter went haywire, a couple of turnovers here and there the Hawks needed someone to grab hold and get them back on track. But what do we see, Smoove deciding to jack up a 20 footer at the worst possible moment. Too often he feeds in to the frenzy instead of stablizing the offense with a drive and at least getting to the line.

Now that I mention it, that's one thing we' ve missed in our offense in the 4th quarter. A player to draw fouls and keep adding points even if the defense clamps down. That's one of my major issues with Joe.

And hopefully that is something that LD will address and correct with his offense. I don't know that I've ever seen an offense that ranked as highly as ours did in offense last year have so many very long stretches of not scoring as we did last year and most of those seemed to come in the 4th quarter.

Work on the mid-range game in the summer along with post moves and moves off the dribble but mentally plan to take that ball inside as much as humanly possible once the whistle blows. As Dolfan points out, the numbers are indisputable and teams would love to see Josh shooting the jumper because it means he isn't killing them inside.

That's exactly my point. I'm happy to hear that he's working on his mid-range game but at some point someone needs to tell him that he's a tremendously efficient inside scorer and that our team needs him to focus on dominating in there because he's the best we've got at it. Smoove is an incredibly talented player and he can do many things very well but it's a double-edged sword because if he only concentrated on the things that he is among the very best at then he'd be an all-star without a doubt. If we could get him to stick to scoring in the paint, rebounding, and blocking shots he's capable of putting up numbers similar to Dwight Howard (except for rebounding numbers) because he is just as talented but he's got to focus on his game more and learn to stick to what he's best at. Dwight is only a mediocre jump shooter but you won't see him spending all day outside trying to shoot them. Take a look at these numbers:

Howard

Shot	Att.	eFG%	Ast'd	Blk'd	Pts

Jump	13%  	.250   	37%  	13%  	0.7 

Close	58%  	.554   	39%  	10%  	6.6 

Dunk	25%  	.961   	70%  	1%  	4.8 

Tips	4%  	.471   	0%  	0%  	0.4 

Inside	87%  	.665   	50%  	7%  	11.8 

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[b]Smith[/b]

 
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Shot	Att.	eFG%	Ast'd	Blk'd	Pts

Jump	36%  	.285   	73%  	4%  	2.5 

Close	46%  	.538   	55%  	10%  	6.0 

Dunk	14%  	.930   	77%  	3%  	3.3 

Tips	4%  	.590   	0%  	0%  	0.6 

Inside	64%  	.630   	59%  	8%  	9.9 

What this shows is that Smith is nearly equal or superior to Dwight in shooting in all areas but where you see the MAJOR difference is that Dwight focuses on scoring in the paint and Josh tries to spread his shot selection out around the court. I'd like to think that is more a product of Woody's "system" but from the things I've read from Josh I think that is more of his doing and it's Woody's fault for not putting a stop to it.

[pimp]

SLAM: You working on any other aspects of your game you hope to tighten for next year?

JS: Yeah. Being more comfortable off the dribble. Making moves off the dribble, and just being more consistent on my midrange jump shot.

[Admin]

SLAM: You working on any other aspects of your game you hope to tighten for next year?

JS: Yeah. Being more comfortable off the dribble. Making moves off the dribble, and just being more consistent on my midrange jump shot.

That is part of it, the other question didn't ask him what he's working on, it asked him what we'll see from him next year.

This question addresses what he's working on and the thing that sticks out to me the most is he doesn't mention working on scoring inside at all and that is a problem.

[Dsinner]

This question addresses what he's working on and the thing that sticks out to me the most is he doesn't mention working on scoring inside at all and that is a problem.

Why would you want him working on something he's already good at? As a player you always want to get better at your "problem" areas. All he has to do is become an average midrange shooter and he will be even better. If he perfected his inside game and didn't improve his jump shot at all he's still the same Josh.

[AHF]

Why would you want him working on something he's already good at? As a player you always want to get better at your "problem" areas. All he has to do is become an average midrange shooter and he will be even better. If he perfected his inside game and didn't improve his jump shot at all he's still the same Josh.

I disagree with this. I think Josh has a lot of growing he can still do to expand his inside game and that doing things like adding legit post moves would do more to increase his value than anything less than very substantial improvement of his perimeter game.